Leaving Los Angeles: A Sports Pilgrimage

This piece is kind of adapted from one of the earlier posts on this blog. I decided to throw it up anyway because it's a good "introduction" article and it's getting posted as my first piece in the Boston newspaper Barstool Sports (www.barstoolsports.com).

"WHY THE HELL ARE YOU MOVING TO BOSTON?"

This is a question my friends have posed to me a lot in the last few weeks. I can count on my fingers the number of times I've ventured into the dark, scary world outside California, so my decision to begin my post-college life back East scared them. Their shock was usually accompanied by the words "expensive," "rude," and "freezing rain." Still, I'm resolute in pulling up my Orange County roots and moving to the Cradle of Modern America for one primary reason:

The sports.

I am a California boy through and through. I grew up surfing and attending meaningless September baseball games in shorts and T-shirts. I say "dude" more than is necessary. Consequently, this may make me an ill fit for Massachusetts. However, if there is one thing I've learned that I have in common with Bostonians, it is that they have in spades the most glaring absence in Los Angeles: they care about sports.

Don't get me wrong, you will still find the occasional serious Angels fan, or the guy who remains in mourning for the exodus of the Rams and Raiders. Still, the sports knowledge of the average Angeleno (God, I hate that word) could be inscribed on the outside edge of a dime. The avenues for legitimate sports here are discussion are few and far between. Furthermore, because sports don't typically qualify as the New Hotness in terms of trendiness, the L.A. sports fan is afforded little respect or attention. Little by little, I realized that my development as a sports fan in Los Angeles is akin to Stephen Hawking being born in the remote wildernesses of Papua New Guinea. I awaken every day in an environment that is hostile to my kind - a place where more people know who Ryan Seacrest is than Yhency Brazoban.

Let's break it down:

The prime seats at every game are treated as an opportunity for celebrities to make themselves visible. This is why it is an unwritten rule for a telecast of any L.A. sporting event to spend a minimum of two full minutes pointing out every B-lister in the crowd, often to the point where they MISS IMPORTANT GAME ACTION. If I wanted to see Cameron Diaz eat Justin Timberlake's face in a public setting, I would pick up a copy of Us Weekly. Also, I would be a middle-aged housewife.

Even the average fans leave something to be desired, though. I came of age attending Angels games at what used to be the Big A, watching a slew of terrible Disney-owned teams swap uniforms on a yearly basis. Still, I had a great time. Then I gradually made the troubling discovery that all the fans around me were a)wasting two seats on their three-year-old twin daughters, b)conducting cell phone conversations in the middle of innings, or c)conspicuously absent by the bottom of the seventh. The terrible truth about many generalizations is that they tend to come into being for a good reason. When people say that Southern California sports fans suck, they may or may not be speaking from a position of authority - but, as a rule, they are correct. Meanwhile, at Fenway people know and obey the "don't get up during a pitch" rule and will vocally tell you of their displeasure if you violate it - just as God intended.

The final straw came when I was around 17. I still have a vivid memory of attending an Angels-Blue Jays game with a friend of mine in around 2001. My baseball coach had offered us his season tickets for the night, so I was watching the game from an excellent seat down the third-base line, in the second row. The family in front of us seemed okay, until their two rugrats started climbing all over their seats and staring at us. They were decked out in brand-new Angels gear, distracting others from the game with their shouting, and generally behaving like prime candidates for postnatal abortion. The mom, obviously sensing our discomfort, tried to calm me down by letting me know, "Oh, we'll be out of here in a few minutes. We just came for the fireworks."

Great. Thanks.

During the fall, I wandered around blindly like a homeless drunk, a man without a country. I was cruelly deprived of something no red-blooded American boy should live without: a football team. The fact that L.A. has no team doesn't mean that it doesn't have football fans, though - it just means that the few diehards in existence have nothing to do on weekends except get liquored up, strap on their Raiders pillaging gear, and celebrate with a couple of new tattoos and stab wounds. Imagine downtown Oakland on game day. Now imagine that without the added benefit of a football game being played, and you have most sports bars in Los Angeles on Sunday afternoon.

I don't want to bring up professional basketball, since the Lakers appear to exist only during the seasons when they have a winning record. Still, if they're in the playoffs, you can expect every other car on the freeways to be sporting a yellow "GO LAKERS!" flag. Oh, and Jack Nicholson. Hadn't you heard? He's a Lakers fan, apparently. So are Leonardo DiCaprio, Dustin Hoffman, and noted sports fanatic Tobey Maguire. Furthermore, our most successful professional hockey team to date was founded by the Disney corporation, and shares the unfortunate name of a movie starring Emilio Estevez that I will neglect to mention here in the interest of good taste.

Somehow, I endured all this and emerged from the fire with my love for sports unscathed. So now, I feel ready to play ball with the big boys. I want to use the phrase "nickel defense" in mixed company and not have to explain what it means. I want to have a meaningful discussion with a girl in a bar about the importance of competent long relievers. I want to have someone get my jokes about Clint Barmes and Edgardo Alfonzo. So please, open your doors to me, city of champions. It's time for a fresh start.